Fire Emblem Warriors is one of my favorite musou games because it combines two of the things that I love most - Fire Emblem and a power trip that lets me slaughter thousands of digital enemies. It never really felt like a true crossover, though, but rather just another Warriors game with a Fire Emblem skin. It's the same problem that I had with the original Hyrule Warriors. Three Hopes, however, does for Fire Emblem Warriors what Age of Calamity did for Hyrule Warriors. As the name hints, Three Hopes is set in the world of Switch's core Fire Emblem game, Three Houses. It doesn't follow Three House's story or take place before or after but is rather a different story in a parallel world of sorts. Instead of playing as Byleth and becoming an instructor at the Gareg Mach Officers' Academy, you play Shez and end up becoming a student at the academy. Byleth does appear in the game, but they're not the protagonist here. I won't spoil any of the story, but suffice it to say that Shez briefly enrolls in the academy and then ends up thrust into the middle of a massive war that engulfs the entire continent. The game is a nice upgrade over the original Fire Emblem Warriors. It still doesn't blow anyone's mind with its visuals, but it definitely looks a step above the first game. Likewise, the performance felt a good bit more stable. The most important upgrade, though, is to the game's overall structure and mechanics. The story feels more cohesive and core to the experience here rather than a story that was just created to have something to drape over the gameplay, and that's an important distinction; was the story written to be a core part of the game's package, or was it written as an afterthought just to tie the game's elements together? Along those lines, the game includes paralogues, side quests that expand and further develop certain characters. If you have the right characters in your army at the right part of the story, you'll be able to play these paralogues to get flesh out their story, get more experience, and get more money and items. Rather than just being an extra battle to give you a chance to grind, these paralogues genuinely feel like worthwhile fights from a narrative perspective. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is, in my opinion, the peak of Koei Tecmo's Warriors series. The story is told far better than most of their spin-off games, and the characters are given genuine development that complements what Three Houses gave us. With that said, I definitely recommend playing Three Houses first; the story and character interactions will be much more rewarding if you have. This is also probably the Warriors games that gives you the most value as there are three distinct paths of the game, one for each of the three factions - the Empire, the Kingdom, and the Alliance. This essentially turns the game from a roughly 60 hour game to a 180 to 200 hour game. That's a lot of value for a $60 game. Couple that with the fact that it's an extraordinarily fun game to play from the perspective of both hack-and-slash slaughter as well as a strategic perspective from ordering the deployed characters you aren't currently controlling, and you've got an absolute must-play for the Switch. My Rating - S |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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